Deck

Resist!

Spain, 1936: General Franco and his troops advance through the territories of Spain, giving way to a long period of civil war and repression. After the Spanish Civil War, a group of loyalists to the Republic continued the armed struggle, forming resistance groups better known as "Maquis". Hidden in the mountains, these men and women risked their lives to defend the ideals of democracy and freedom.

Fighting against them were the Army of Franco, the Civil Guard, and the Armed Police, but the Maquis perfected their guerilla warfare in France during the second World War and were determined to take back their homeland. In the head of each Maquis resonated the echo of the desire of many compatriots: Resist!

Resist! is a fast-playing, card-driven solitaire game in which you take on the role of the Spanish Maquis, fighting against the Francoist regime. Over a series of rounds, you undertake increasingly difficult missions, and completing missions earns you the points needed to win. Failing to defeat missions and enemies may cause you to lose. At the end of each round, you must choose whether to end the resistance or risk it and take on another mission.

At the beginning of the game, you assemble a team of twelve Maquis, which are represented by a deck of cards. At the heart of the game is the tension between keeping your Maquis concealed from Franco or revealing them to unlock their full potential. Unfortunately, revealed Maquis are removed from your deck, and you likely won't be able to use them for the rest of the game. While Resist! does have some minor deck-building elements, it is primarily a "deck-destruction" game in which you have to manage your deck, balancing the decision of defeating the immediate threat with trying to move on to the next mission.

Revive

Revive civilization, 5000 years after everything was destroyed. Lead your tribe and explore the frozen earth. Harness its resources. Recruit surface survivors to your cause. Build factories with powerful machines. And populate ancient sites to relearn your tribe's forgotten technologies.
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Revive is a game for 1-4 players with asymmetric player powers, highly variable setup, and no fighting or direct conflict. Playing through the 5-part campaign unlocks additional contents, and once all contents have been unlocked, the game can be replayed indefinitely.
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At the beginning of the game, each player gets a set of citizen cards, a tribe board, as well as a huge dual-layer player board. The tribe board shows your unique tribe ability and the ancient technologies that you may relearn during the game. The dual-layer player board is where you place your custom machines and upgrade your card slots.

A main goal of the game is to reach and populate the large ancient sites. These ancient locations are randomized, and as they are important sources of victory points, they will shape your strategy differently each game.

On your turn you take two actions:

Play a card (its effect is determined by which card slot you use)
Explore (reveal an area tile and recruit a new citizen card)
Populate (populate an ancient location to learn a new technology)
Build factory (the adjacent terrains determine which machine tracks you advance)

In addition you may use power to activate any number of your machines, modifying your actions.

Instead of taking two actions you may Hibernate. This will circulate your cards, moving your played cards to your resting area, and releasing the cards in your resting area back to you. In addition you regain your used power, so that you may activate your machines again.

The multi-use cards play an important role: Each card shows a resource ability (on the top) and a special ability (on the lower part). Playing a card in one of your top slots activates the resource action; In a lower slot you activate the special ability. You may install slot modules in the card slots, and these are activated whenever you play a card matching its color. It is possible to find combinations that lets you chain cards, triggering several slot modules and abilities in one action.

Building factories harness the power of the surrounding terrains, advancing your marker on one of three machine tracks. This may unlock machines that can be activated, using energy.

Reaching certain milestones lets you take an artifact from the main board. Each artifact boosts one of the three scoring categories on your personal scoring card.

The game ends when all artifacts have been taken, and the player with the most points wins.

Rolling Heights

Roll Your Meeples, Build the City.

It's the 1920's and your career as a general contractor is about to take off. You have just started your business in a rapidly expanding city.

In Rolling Heights, players roll workers in the form of meeples. Standing meeples work hard that day and provide special actions and building materials, while face-down meeples provide nothing. You can always push your luck for better rolls, but you might lose valuable materials you need to construct new buildings. Completing buildings gains you prestige, as well as new workers to help you construct even larger buildings, including skyscrapers.

Will you construct the next famous landmark?

—description from the publisher

Clank!: Catacombs

The catacombs of the skeletal dragon Umbrok Vessna are mysterious and dangerous. Portals transport you all around the dungeon depths. Wayshrines offer vast riches to intrepid explorers. Prisoners are counting on you to free them. Ghosts, once disturbed, may haunt you to death. Despite all that, it's time to leave the board behind with Clank! Catacombs, a standalone deck-building adventure.

Each trip into the catacombs is unique since you lay tiles to create the dungeon. You can play using only the all-new dungeon deck, or you can include cards from previous Clank! expansions.

Find your fortune (and escape the dragon!) in Clank! Catacombs.

—description from the publisher

Great Western Trail: Argentina

In Great Western Trail: Argentina, you own a vast estancia in Argentina at the end of the 19th century, and you will need to travel the plains of the Pampas with your cattle to deliver them to the main train station in Buenos Aires.

Great Western Trail: Argentina features gameplay elements similar to Great Western Trail such as deck management, the rondel mechanism, and the ability to upgrade your player board, along with twists on these elements and new features.

The player board features a new type of worker — farmers — and different paths await on the game board to confront you with more choices. Will you take the road with buildings or a path past farmers? Maybe you'll have the chance to use your cows — well, the strength on your cow cards — to help farmers, getting them on your side and adding grain, a new type of resource, to your income, with grain being used for boat and city tiles.

Perhaps you can unlock shortcuts that allow you to deliver your herd to Buenos Aires more quickly. Sure, you'll forfeit the use of action buildings, but maybe you can catch others unaware, with the ships leaving before they deliver. The timing of reaching the central train station to deliver your herd has never been so crucial, and valuable bonuses await on the city's port tiles.

Money is easier to get in Great Western Trail: Argentina, but you have more to manage in terms of action options, shortcuts, and cards (including the new exhaustion cards), so the challenges won't let up.

Great Western Trail: Argentina also includes a solitaire challenge in which Pedro is waiting for you to try to beat his score.